Shows I'm Seeing this Summer...On A Clear Day

[edjames]

taking a break from Broadway and focusing on off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway offerings.

 

First up was the Irish Rep revival of On A Clear Day, starring Melissa Errico and Stephen Bogardus. Despite efforts to tighten up the storyline, this scaled back version just doesn't work, and somehow, given the history fo the show, I don't think it ever will. A good cast but somehow it was unsalvageable in the long run. FYI This was my third production of this show! I must be a glutton for punishment or an eternal optimist that hopes it'll get better. Great score, lousy book.

 

Review: ‘On a Clear Day,’ Eternally Odd, Gets Yet Another Life

 

By Jesse Green. June 28, 2018

 

Bizarre subjects are no deal breaker for musicals; think human meat pies and philosophical felines. But few shows have as bewildering a topic as “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever,” the 1965 jaw-dropper about ESP, telekinesis and past-life regression that’s a weird mix of laughably earnest woo-woo and chipper Broadway savvy.

 

For the savvy, we have the score to thank: a treasure trunk of standards with music by Burton Lane and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Songs like “

,” “What Did I Have That I Don’t Have?” and “

” are so catchy and well constructed that, stripped of context, you’d have no idea they were originally attached to such strange ideas. (In the musical, “Hurry, It’s Lovely Up Here” is sung to a flowerpot.)

 

For the strange ideas, Lerner has to take the blame. It was he who, obsessed with the New Age fads flitting around the era, devised a story — about a love triangle among a psychiatrist, his patient and her former incarnation — that became, over the years, Broadway’s pity project: the Golden Age book most in need of rescuing.

 

My conclusion, based on

, the 2000 Encores concert starring Kristin Chenoweth, the complete rewriting of the show as a Harry Connick, Jr. vehicle in 2011 and the cute revisal that opened at the Irish Repertory Theater on Thursday, is: It can’t be fixed. The pleasures of “On a Clear Day” are so intertwined with its absurdities that no theatrical version can separate them. You have to enjoy it for what it is, or not.

 

The Irish Rep production, led by Melissa Errico in the dual role of wacky Daisy Gamble and grand Melinda Wells, gives it a good go, on a very small scale. (The cast has been reduced to 11 from 47 and the orchestra to five from 31.) Songs, subplots and characters have been dumped, including Daisy’s boyfriend, Warren — presumably to enhance Daisy’s agency in the story. She goes to see the hypnotherapist Mark Bruckner (Stephen Bogardus) not because her smoking threatens Warren’s advancement at work (as in the original) but because it threatens her own. Which might make more sense if we ever learned what Daisy does.

 

But Dr. Bruckner isn’t really interested in her smoking anyway; he’s interested in her ESP and telekinetic powers. She anticipates phone calls, intuits the location of missing objects and makes flowers burst from their pots “as if the cops were after them.”

 

But Dr. Bruckner isn’t really interested in her smoking anyway; he’s interested in her ESP and telekinetic powers. She anticipates phone calls, intuits the location of missing objects and makes flowers burst from their pots “as if the cops were after them.”

 

 

It is while fishing around in her subconscious that Dr. Bruckner discovers her previous incarnation as Melinda, the highborn daughter of an antislavery crusader in Georgian England. Compared to Daisy, Melinda is confident, unconventional and uninhibited; naturally, Dr. Bruckner falls in love with her. Alas, Daisy’s the one who falls in love with him.

 

The rules of hypnotically induced past-life regression are murky. Apparently, other characters from Daisy’s past — like Melinda’s lover, Edward (John Cudia) — can hitch rides into the present, so they get to sing flowery arias like “

.” And the therapist himself can hitch rides back, which gets confusing fast. When Dr. Bruckner tries to save Melinda from drowning on a ship bound for America around 1800, the story enters a causal loop paradox that makes some people snigger and others throw up their hands. I did both.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/theater/review-on-a-clear-day-you-can-see-forever-irish-rep.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftheater&action=click&contentCollection=theater&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=5&pgtype=sectionfront

[+ WilliamM]

@edjames, I liked Barbara Harris in 1965, so might consider seeing it again. But, I agree with everything you wrote.

[bostonman]

Agreed. Fun score (though ironically the title song tends to be one of my least favorite songs in the show, and I find Streisand's version of that song essentially unlistenable), but weird, weird show. The recent Broadway revival, with the gender switching, just made it even worse. Though I did like the inclusion of "Every Night At Seven." I assume that's not in this version?

 

"She Wasn't You" is a flowery aria????